Taylor Swift’s new movie, Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, hit number one on the global box office chart with $46 million ($13 million internationally / $33 million domestic).
The movie launched alongside Swift’s highly-anticipated new album The Life of a Showgirl. Such was the excitement that AMC relaxed the chain’s usual guest etiquette rules for showings, with dancing, singing and shaking it all off “welcomed.”
Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl includes a first look at the album’s lead single “The Fate of Ophelia” and a behind-the-scenes peek at its filming. Swifties also got to see lyric videos for other songs and Swift’s “never-before-seen personal reflections” on her latest material.
It seemed to do the trick, with the impressive box office haul coming only two weeks after Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl was announced. This is Swift’s second chart-topping box office debut, following 2023’s The Eras Tour, which opened to a huge $93.2 million. But it will be a brief stay, with Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl only available in theaters from October 3-5.
While Swift will be celebrating, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson will be left scratching his head after his Oscar contender The Smashing Machine flopped hard. A24’s new movie, which sees Johnson transformed in the role of legendary mixed martial arts and UFC fighter Mark Kerr, made just $6 million at the domestic box office. That’s a career low for the WWE star, whose 2010 thriller Faster made $8.5 million, not adjusted for inflation.
According to Variety, A24 has something of a disaster on its hands here, as it reportedly spent $50 million to produce the movie “and many millions more on promotional efforts.”
IGN’s The Smashing Machine review returned a 7/10. We said: “The Smashing Machine punches hard for the most part, but stops short of a knockout.”
Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio’s One Battle After Another has crossed the $100 million mark at the global box office after two weekends in theaters. That’s enough to make it the highest-grossing film of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, overtaking There Will Be Blood, which made $76.4 million globally back in 2007. But the bad news is that One Battle After Another reportedly needs around $300 million to break even theatrically, and that now seems unlikely.
IGN’s One Battle After Another review returned a 10/10. We said: “Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio finally team up, and the result is a 10/10 masterpiece.”
And if you’re wondering just how much interest there remains in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, Avatar: The Way of Water’s week-long re-issue, which includes a sneak peek at the upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash, brought in $10 million ($3.2 million domestic and $6.8 million international) this weekend. Prior to this weekend, the movie had already earned $2.32 billion, standing as the third highest-grossing movie globally of all-time.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
